My heart sank when I read the email from my department chair that one of my online classes for the fall did not make and that I had been assigned a face-to-face section. In the days since I have cried a little and panicked a little. I am fully vaxxed as are my close family (husband, son, mother), but I am overweight and three of the four of us are over 50 so that is reason for caution as the Delta variant rampages. Another weight is the simple fact that only about 1/3 of those between the ages of 18-30 in Kentucky are vaccinated and you might understand my concern about spending 75-90 minutes twice a week in a windowless room with 20 other humans. While there is some relief that the presidents of Kentucky’s public universities (including mine) have agreed to require masks, there are no social distancing requirements. I am not just worried about my family and myself. I also do not want my class to be the place where my students are exposed to any virus (let us not forget the flu etc.) as we collaborate in small groups or pair up to review drafts – activities at the heart of my writing classroom in the before times. Long before the pandemic, and evil administrators hijacked the term hybrid learning to cover the multitude of wrongs they perpetrated in the name of pandemic teaching/learning, I was a fan of hybrid classes – which means simply that we divided our time between in-person synchronous learning and online asynchronous learning. When we met as a group we engaged in a delightful mix of writing, sharing, and collaborating – much of it in pairs or small groups engaged in activities designed to inspire, support, and challenge developing writers as needed while offering instant feedback from trusted peers as well as the instructor. I loved the ability to eavesdrop or check-in with my students as needed so I could provide just-in-time instruction or advice. Our class meetings meant that students were well prepared for the work of the week that would take place online, but our online work meant that students had the time and space to think and write and provide feedback at their own pace and on their own schedule. But the pandemic put a stop to all of that.
Last fall my hybrid classes were disrupted because I could not (due to social distancing restrictions) have all of my students in my classroom at one time. Add to that mix a constant siphoning into quarantine and it was mind-boggling to work out a consistent schedule that allowed for the previous collaboration we enjoyed. But I also knew, thanks to our first spring of pandemic teaching/learning, that online learning (even when taught by someone as experienced and excited about its possibilities as I) can be problematic for many first-year college students who need more structure and support as they struggle with the dual challenges of adjusting to college life and exploring their identities as writers. I pitched, designed, and piloted the first-year writing classes at my institution almost two decades ago and I believe in the power and effectiveness of asynchronous online writing instruction, but I believe that embarking on that enterprise should be a choice. I also believe that for some students who are worn down and traumatized after 18 months of pandemic living and learning that the adjustments required by asynchronous online learning may be a bridge too far. There is also the selfish truth that I miss writing with my students (and the less selfish truth that writing in community is a powerful experience) and so the Jam Session was born.
I chose the name because I like the informal vibe it invokes because the ultimate, and best known, version of jam session is a group of musicians just hanging out, playing together, and inspiring their fellow musicians to new creative challenges. I also chose the name because it is a fun and creative endeavor that gamers enjoy (see game jam). However, it is important to note that every National Writing Project teacher will quickly recognize that our jam sessions will actually be writing marathons. I’m not going to lie that last year’s jam sessions made me cry because they were a bittersweet reminder of what was lost and I struggled to balance the magic of a true jam session with pressure to teach synchronously, but this year we are going to lean heavily into the writing marathon format to connect as a community, support the writing projects underway in class, and bolster our humanity. I am excited to use the writing invitations to both inspire writing and model approaches to writing. I am excited to experiment with collaborative writing in conjunction with our jam sessions. But most of all I am excited to harness the power of the writing marathon to invite my students to write with me and become writers.
My goal is to write and share with all my first-year writing students in one of three one-hour writing sessions. The current plan is to offer students the option of attending either an in-person session (offered during class time) or an online session in hopes that this will allow for a smaller group of writers. In fact, we will only write for about 30 minutes of that hour (in three 10-minute sessions) as we will share between each writting session. We will begin with the prompt that the famous New Orleans Writing Marathon so commonly shares: I am a writer from… Then writers will have the option to continue their writing started in the first session, respond to a line or lines from their fellow writers, or pursue one of the writing invitations I will share each week. Those writing invitations will be open invitations that can evoke a variety of writing responses that may connect with our works-in-progress and/or may inspire new ways of thinking about those works or the larger work of our class.
I also intend to experiment with an adaptation of sharing often employed during the National Writing Project’s #WriteAcrossAmerica virtual writing marathon. During #WriteAcrossAmerica sessions it is common for us to return to the main room after writing with a breakout group in order to share one line from our writing that day. What I would like to do is to create a Google doc for each week where we will share one golden line, a line that shines brightly for whatever reason, from our writing and, if possible, one golden line that we overheard from another writer. I also hope that our community of writers will play with that collaborative poem by reordering the lines and take inspiration from the words shared.
While I have employed all these activities in classes in the past, they have been one time events (looking at you end-of-semester celebrations) or smaller chunks of a more traditional class (looking at you bell ringers). I am looking forward to spending this time just writing with my students and showing them the joy of writing in community. I want my students to find joy in writing and hope that along the way more of my students will see themselves as writers than when we began our journey together.
See Writing Our Way Into The Journey to check out the writing invitations used for our first week as well as the collaborative poem we wrote across three separate marathon sessions.
You can learn more about the writing marathon model in a Deeper Dive offered via the National Writing Project’s Write Now Teacher Studio. The Writing Marathon Deeper Dive is an asynchronous professional development experience with resources and models to help you create your own writing marathon.
